Bamboo Legend

Fan asked me to try out Bamboo Legend in Mississauga. So I did today. I have always been meaning to try out this place. I tried going here for dinner a couple of years ago, but it was closed! I remember at the time thinking that their business hours were a bit strange and how would they make money if they don’t open at peak times. Anyhow, I guess we ‘lucked out’ tonight.

Inside the restaurant is clean, spotless, inviting and comfortable. I thought it was more inviting and cozy than the expensive Beaumont Kitchen we tried yesterday.

We ordered the Chicken Spring Rolls to start, the Soft Shell Crab Curry, and the Dinner Special in which I will describe in detail below.

The Chicken Spring Rolls were packed with filling. The wrap seemed a little thicker or firmer than used other Thai or Vietnamese places. They did a good job in taking out the excess grease. The rolls weren’t very flavourful unless we used the sweet chili sauce

The Soft Shell Crab Curry was a delightful surprise to see on Bamboo Legend’s menu; I have never seen this offered anywhere before. In the past (and still) I have always been on the search for Singapore Chili Crab, and in which I managed to find out in Richmond Hill. This soft shell crab will do! Unlike Singapore Chili Crab which uses Dungeness crab, this delicious dish by Bamboo Legend uses a small soft shell crab. This is stir fried in Thai golden curry with mixed peppers, onion, carrots, etc. Yum!

Above is the Dinner Combo special at $14.99. On this plate, we have chosen a papaya salad, fish cakes, red curry with chicken. A caramel custard was included with dessert. The portion was generous as we shared this combo plus the curry crab above.

I thought the papaya salad was very mild and could’ve used more punch. I remember trying an amazing papaya salad at a Thai restaurant in Orlando, and the salad had a lot of zing and cool crispy refreshing taste.

We had a different idea of what the fish cake would be like (think crab cakes). As it turns out this fish cake is the usual fish paste that can be found in Asian grocery stores. A spicy sauce was included for dipping.

The curry with chicken was quite nice on rice. The flavour was not overpowering. My daughter poured her whole bowl of rice into the curry so it appeared to be a rice curry soup… At least she was kind enough to let me take a couple spoonfuls of curry onto my own rice!

A Caramel Custard was included with the combo. This custard actually tasted much better than the creme caramel offered at more expensive, non-asian restaurants.

Of course, we always need to order the Sticky Rice and Mango dessert. This was a very nice serving. I was prepared to receive just a tiny plate enough for one person, but this was more than enough for both of us. The mango was on the hard side, but always ends up tasting great with the coconut rice.